Day 5 and Day 6. Shopping at Vestby Outlet and dinner al fresco

Ski, NorwayDay 5: After yesterday’s sunshine it was back to heavy rain this morning so a shopping trip was planned to Vestby, the home to Norway’s only outlet mall. Compared to Bicester Village and Cheshire Oaks in the UK, this was much smaller scale, there weren’t many bargains to be had as everything is considerably more expensive in Norway than the UK, but we did make a couple of purchases from Cottonfield, the Danish menswear retailer. Driving back to Ski, the weather improved and a few hours later we were able to light the barbecue and enjoy dinner in the garden.

The delicious Gubrandalsost cheese served with breakfastDay 6: The sun was shining on our final morning, so we spent the time drinking coffee and eating waffles with the delicious Norwegian Gubrandalsost sweet brown cheese sliced on top. (I bought a kilo of this yesterday to take home with me as I haven’t seen it at home). Then it was time to return to Oslo’s La Galleria Bus Station for our Ryanair coach transfer back to Oslo Torp airport and our flight back to Edinburgh.

Back in beautiful EdinburghTo summarise, it has been a pleasant few days in and around Norway’s capital city Oslo that would have been greatly improved if we hadn’t experienced two and a half days of torrential rain, but this was beyond our control and we just carried on making good use of our umbrellas!

It sounds like you had a lot of activities in Oslo! I was pretty blown away by the architecture you captured – especially the ski jump.

It’s a bummer about the rain – I know how frustrating that can be at times. When I went to Iceland, the entire first day was rain. I was able to see some of the main sights, but pictures weren’t able to do them justice because it started pouring.

Since Norway is so far north and with it being June, there wouldn’t have been any chance of seeing the Northern Lights, was there? I’d love to get there to see the lights during winter.

The Frogner park reminded me of Israel’s Baha’i temple (in the city of Haifa). Again, very cool architecture and landscaping.

I wonder, is the Santa Claus post office one of the locations where everybody sends their letters to? I heard that there’s a post office where all Santa Claus-addressed letters go to.

All in all, it seems like you were able to have a wonderful time aside from the rain setback. Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you for your detailed comments it’s good to hear from you. I’m unsure f that post office is the official Father Christmas one, I doubt it but it’s really nice and sells all sorts of Christmas decorations etc.